Anthropic vs Together AI: Token Pricing, Speed & Intelligence

Full comparison of Anthropic and Together AI — live token pricing, latency, throughput, context window, strengths, weaknesses, and best use cases. Updated July 2026.

Anthropic

Claude — safety-focused frontier AI with exceptional coding ability

Anthropic builds the Claude model family, known for long context windows (up to 200K tokens), strong coding performance, and a safety-first design philosophy. Claude 4 Opus and Sonnet lead on many coding and reasoning benchmarks. Prompt caching is available at significant discounts.

CodingReasoningLong-contextChatAgents

Proprietary models

Together AI

Open-source model hosting with competitive inference pricing

Together AI specialises in hosting open-weight models including the full Llama family, Mixtral, and DeepSeek variants. They offer live pricing via their public API and support fine-tuning workflows. A popular choice for teams that want open-source flexibility without managing their own GPU infrastructure.

Open-sourceFine-tuningCodingChatCost-efficiency

Open-weight hostHosts open weights

Key metrics

Cheapest input ($/1M)

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Cheapest output ($/1M)

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Peak throughput

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Best latency (TTFT)

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Intelligence score

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Context window

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Live token pricing

Strengths & weaknesses

Anthropic

Top coding benchmark scores (Claude 4 Opus)

200K context window on all Claude models

Aggressive prompt caching — up to 90% discount

Strong instruction-following and safety alignment

Extended thinking / reasoning mode on Opus

No open-weight models — full vendor lock-in

Opus is the most expensive frontier model at $15/$75 per 1M tokens

No native image generation capability

Together AI

Largest selection of open-weight models

Fine-tuning support for custom model training

OpenAI-compatible API — easy migration

Competitive pricing on Llama 3.x models

Supports 405B parameter models

No proprietary frontier models

Throughput lower than Groq/Cerebras for speed-critical apps

Fine-tuning adds complexity vs. pure inference providers

Key differentiators

Anthropic

Claude 4 Opus scores highest on coding benchmarks among all frontier models, with a 200K context window and aggressive prompt caching.

Together AI

The broadest open-weight model catalog with fine-tuning support — ideal for teams that need model customisation without self-hosting.

Frequently asked questions

Anthropic FAQs

How much does the Anthropic Claude API cost?

Claude 4 Opus costs $15/1M input and $75/1M output tokens. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is $3/$15 per 1M tokens. Claude Haiku 3.5 is the budget option at $0.80/$4.00. Prompt caching reduces input costs by up to 90%.

What is the context window for Claude models?

All Claude models support a 200,000-token context window, making them ideal for processing long documents, codebases, or multi-turn conversations without truncation.

How does Anthropic prompt caching work?

Anthropic's prompt caching lets you mark portions of your prompt (system prompts, documents, tool definitions) to be cached server-side. Cached tokens are billed at 10% of the standard input price after the first write, making repeated long-context calls dramatically cheaper.

Together AI FAQs

What models does Together AI support?

Together AI hosts 100+ open-weight models including the full Llama 3.x family (8B, 70B, 405B), Mixtral, DeepSeek R1, Qwen, and many others. They also support custom fine-tuned model deployment.

How much does Together AI cost?

Llama 3.3 70B costs $0.88/1M tokens (input and output). Llama 3.1 405B is $3.50/1M tokens. Smaller models like Llama 3.2 11B Vision start at $0.18/1M tokens.

Does Together AI support fine-tuning?

Yes. Together AI offers supervised fine-tuning for Llama and other open-weight models. You can upload training data, run fine-tuning jobs, and deploy the resulting model via their inference API.

Provider resources

Anthropic

Provider page Website Pricing Docs

Together AI

Provider page Website Pricing Docs

Anthropic — Claude — safety-focused frontier AI with exceptional coding ability

Claude 4 Opus scores highest on coding benchmarks among all frontier models, with a 200K context window and aggressive prompt caching.

Together AI — Open-source model hosting with competitive inference pricing

The broadest open-weight model catalog with fine-tuning support — ideal for teams that need model customisation without self-hosting.

Key strengths compared

Anthropic

▸Top coding benchmark scores (Claude 4 Opus)
▸200K context window on all Claude models
▸Aggressive prompt caching — up to 90% discount

Together AI

▸Largest selection of open-weight models
▸Fine-tuning support for custom model training
▸OpenAI-compatible API — easy migration

Provider category context

Anthropic is a frontier lab, founded in 2021. Together AI is a inference api, founded in 2022. Anthropic as a frontier lab trains and serves its own proprietary models. Together AI as an inference API provider hosts open-weight models — typically offering lower prices for equivalent capability tiers but without access to proprietary frontier models.

How to choose between them

Choose Anthropic if you need top coding benchmark scores (claude 4 opus). Choose Together AI if you need largest selection of open-weight models. For high-volume production workloads, run a cost comparison using the token pricing table above with your actual prompt/completion token ratio — the cheapest provider depends heavily on your input-to-output token ratio.